Danusha Laméris: “I’ve been thinking a lot about how languages are worlds and how we’re defined by the ones we’re born into. My niece is growing up speaking English, Russian and Spanish (her parents’ languages) at home. Not speaking a language can be a kind of exile. I never learned Dutch, my father’s language. When I speak Spanish with my husband I know a different side of him. This poem is my little hymn to Arabic.”